Fukushima Emergency what can we do?

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Sunday, 10 December 2017

All part of the now 6 years
ongoing denial campaign of the Japanese Government, denying the harmful effects
of internal radiation and that even at low dose level, meant to calm down the
fears of the local population, and to prepare the venue of the 2020 Tokyo
Olympics and also to incite other countries to lift their import restrictions
and radiation testing of the Eastern Japan produce.

Authorities in Fukushima
plan to scale down radiation tests on rice harvested in the
prefecture.

Since the nuclear accident
in March 2011, the local government has spent 6 billion yen - or about 53
million dollars - every year to check radiation levels of all rice produced in
Fukushima.

The tests require farmers to
transport their harvest to a testing facility. Samples with radiation levels
higher than the government-set limit have not been detected since
2015.

An expert panel convened in
July to review the testing system and survey the opinions of
consumers.

Based on the panel's
recommendations, local authorities have decided to replace full-scale testing
with sample inspections in 47 of the Fukushima's 59
municipalities.

The remaining 12
municipalities are located around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
plant.

Authorities have yet to
decide when they will switch from full-scale to sample testing. Officials say
they will take a decision in February.

Rice is the only produce
from Fukushima to be tested systematically. All other agricultural and marine
products undergo sample testing.

Tuesday, 31 October 2017

I’ve
asked radiation specialists to take on this research, but they have never been
willing to take this on because they say we don’t have any resources or time to
spare because humans are much more important.

This
year the evacuated residents of Japan's Fukushima Prefecture began returning home, and as they
resume their lives, the monkeys who have lived there all along have some
cautions for them—in the form of medical records.

The Japanese
macaques show effects associated with radiation exposure—especially youngsters
born since the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant, according to a wildlife veterinarian who has studied the population since
2008.

Dr.
Shin-ichi Hayama detailed his findings Saturday in Chicago as part of the
University of Chicago's commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the first
man-made controlled nuclear reaction, which took place under the university's
football stadium in 1942 and birthed the technologies of nuclear power and
nuclear weapons.

Hayama
appeared alongside documentary filmmaker Masanori Iwasaki, who has featured
Hayama's work in a series of annual documentaries exploring the impact of
fallout from the reactor meltdowns on wildlife. The fallout led the Japanese
government to evacuate residents from a highly contaminated area surrounding the
plant and extending to the northwest. The plume crossed the Pacific Ocean and
left much diluted quantities of fallout across the United States, an event closely monitored on this
page.

Since
2008, Hayama has studied the bodies of monkeys killed in Fukushima City's effort
to control the monkey population and protect agricultural crops (about 20,000
monkeys are "culled" annually in Japan). Because he was already studying the
monkeys, he was ideally positioned to notice changes affected by radiation
exposure.

"I’m
not a radiation specialist," Hayama said Saturday in Chicago, "but because I’ve
been gathering data since 2008—remember, the disaster took place in 2011—it
seems obvious to me that this is very important research. I’ve asked radiation
specialists to take on this research, but they have never been willing to take
this on because they say we don’t have any resources or time to spare because
humans are much more important.

“So
I had to conclude that there was no choice but for me to take this on, even
though I’m not a specialist in radiation," Hayama said, his remarks translated
by University of Chicago Professor Norma Field. "If we don’t keep records, there
will be no evidence and it will be as if nothing happened. That’s why I’m hoping
to continue this research and create a record.”

Fukushima
City is 50 miles northeast of the Fukushima-Daiichi Power Plant, so the
radiation levels have been lower there than in the restricted areas, now
reopening, that are closer to the plant. Hayama was unable to test monkeys in
the most-contaminated areas, but even 50 miles from the plant, he has documented
effects in monkeys that are associated with radiation. He compared his findings
to monkeys in the same area before 2011 and to a control population of monkeys
in Shimokita Peninsula, 500 miles to the north.

Hayama's
findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, published by
Nature. Among his findings:

Smaller Bodies —
Japanese monkeys born in the path of fallout from the Fukushima meltdown weigh
less for their height than monkeys born in the same area before the March, 2011
disaster, Hayama said.

"We
can see that the monkeys born from mothers who were exposed are showing low body
weight in relation to their height, so they are smaller," he said.

Smaller
Heads And Brains — The exposed monkeys have smaller bodies overall, and
their heads and brains are smaller still.

"We
know from the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that embryos and fetuses exposed
in utero resulted in low birth weight and also in microcephaly, where the brain
failed to develop adequately and head size was small, so we are trying to
confirm whether this also is happening with the monkeys in Fukushima," Hayama
said.

Anemia
— The monkeys show a reduction in all blood components: red blood cells, white
blood cells, hemoglobin, and the cells in bone marrow that produce blood
components.

"There's
clearly a depression of blood components in the Fukushima monkeys," said Hayama.
"We can see that in these monkeys, that there is a correlation between white
blood cell counts and the radio-cesium concentrations in their muscles. This
actually is comparable to what’s been reported with children of Chernobyl."

Monkeys
with higher concentrations of radioactive cesium in their muscles, to the right
on the graph, have lower white blood cell counts.

"We
have taken these tests from 2012 through 2017, and the levels have not
recovered. So we have to say this is not an acute phenomenon. It has become
chronic, and we would have to consider radiation exposure as a possible cause,"
Hayama said.

Hayama
has appeared in several documentaries by Masanori Isawaki, who was 70 years old
in 2011 and ready to retire from a thirty-year career making wildlife
documentaries—he is best known for his portrait of "Mozu: The Snow Monkey"—when the Fukushima reactors melted
down.

"Having
turned 70 I thought, I’ve done enough, I can sit back. And then the nuclear
disaster struck," he said, his remarks also translated by Field. "I watched TV
shows and read the newspaper for a year and kept asking myself, is there
something left in me that I can do? A year later in 2012, with a cameraman and a
sound engineer, the three of us just decided: In any case let’s just go to
Fukushima, see what’s there.”

Since
then he has made five films, one each year, documenting radiation impacts on
wildlife, grouping them under the title "Fukushima: A Record of Living Things." Two episodes were
screened Saturday in Chicago, their first screenings in the United States.

At
first Iwasaki documented white spots and deformed tails on the reduced number of
barn swallows who survived after the disaster.

"It's
something we haven't seen anywhere else but Chernobyl and Fukushima," says the
narrator of Iwasaki's 2013 film, "so it's clearly related to radiation. It
probably doesn't hurt the bird to have some white feathers, but it's a marker of
exposure to radiation.

"The
barn swallows in Fukushima are responding in the same way as what we've seen in
Chernobyl. The young birds are not surviving. They are not fledging very
well."

The
white spots also turned up on black cows. Some types of marine snails vanished,
then gradually returned. Fir trees stemmed differently, and the flower stalks of
some dandelions grew thick and deformed. Dandelion stalks are a favorite food of
Japanese monkeys, but the monkeys showed no obvious deformities, so Isawaki
turned to Hayama to find out how radiation was affecting them.

Saturday, 2 September 2017

Workers wearing protective suits and masks work on
the No. 2 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
x

TOKYO - A state-backed entity tasked with supporting
the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power station proposed Thursday
that melted fuel be removed from the side of three of the crippled reactors as
part of the process to scrap the complex.

Based on a formal proposal, the government and the
plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) will determine
specific approaches to carry out the process on each reactor next month and
update the plant decommissioning road map.

Under its strategic plan for 2017, the Nuclear Damage
Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp called for the removal of the
fuel by partially filling the three reactors with water to cover some of the
nuclear debris while allowing access to carry out the work.

The entity also pointed out that the decommissioning
work requires phased efforts while maintaining flexibility, as the project still
faces many uncertainties.

The extraction work from the Nos. 1-3 reactors at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, which suffered meltdowns following the
massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, is seen as the most difficult step
toward the ultimate goal of decommissioning the entire complex, set to take at
least 30 to 40 years to complete.

The government and TEPCO are currently aiming to start
the extraction work from 2021.

Under the plan, the Nuclear Damage Compensation and
Decommissioning Facilitation body proposed using a remotely controlled apparatus
to shave debris from the underside of the lower section of the reactors'
containment vessel while controlling the level of water.

Debris remains not only in the reactors' pressure
vessel but also piled and scattered at the bottom of the containment vessel that
houses the reactor vessel.

As for debris left in the reactors' pressure vessel,
the entity will consider removing it from the upper part of the reactors, it
said.

The decommissioning body had previously considered a
strategy to fill the containment vessel with water as water is effective in
containing radiation, but it has shelved the idea as the reactor containers are
believed to have been damaged and would leak.

Following a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in March 2011,
tsunami inundated the six-reactor plant, located on ground 10 meters above sea
level, and flooded power supply facilities.

Reactor cooling systems were crippled and the three
reactors suffered fuel meltdowns, while hydrogen explosions damaged the
buildings housing the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors.

The Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning
Facilitation entity was established after the Fukushima crisis, the worst
nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, to help the utility pay damages. The
state-backed entity holds a majority stake in the operator.

Thursday, 17 August 2017

El País Semanal (Spanish newspaper), May 2, 2016 (emphasis added): Fukushima: Contaminated
lives… Spanish media investigates how the 2011 Japanese tsunami changed the
course of the country’s history… the Fukushima
nuclear plant started to leak radiation that seeped insidiously into the
atmosphere, the soil and the Pacific Ocean… Mr
Toru Anzai, 63, wanders around the house he abandoned five years ago [in]
Litate… Two years ago, he had a heart attack and a stroke… in the hospital they
found a hole in the frontal lobe of his brain that was producing paralysis down
the left side of his body. The doctor said it could have been caused by
absorbing cesium over a period of time… [After the reactor explosion on] March
14, he heard a thunderous noise… It didn’t take long for the wind to bring the
penetrating smell of melted iron mixed with sulfur to Litate as a massive toxic
cloud blew towards his home. In spite of the mayor of Litate’s assurance that
there was no risk of radiation, Mr Anzai bought his first dosimeter on April
18… the radiation in the room where he and his brothers had been sleeping for
the past month was at six microSieverts an hour – 20 times higher than the
level stipulated by the government for relocating residents…
[link to elpais.com]

Xinhua, May 23, 2016: Five years on, Fukushima
remains shrouded in untold stories… Some of them suffer from
radioactive-related diseases, and some are seeking help but having nobody to
turn to. [Since] the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster… various investigations and commemorations have never ceased…
Yet on the Fukushima
nuclear disaster, probes have always been wrapped in an ominous cloak for the
past five years… However, concealing the truth will not lead people’s memory to
oblivion, but arouse anger… One focal point is the local children’s poor
health, especially thyroid cancer… The International Society for Environmental
Epidemiology, a global organization, sent a message to the Japanese government
this January expressing worry over the high incidence of thyroid cancer…
[link to news.xinhuanet.com]

Xinhua, May 23, 2016: A 2015 research found that children living near the Fukushima nuclear facilities are significantly up to 50
times more likely to develop thyroid cancer compared to those children living
elsewhere in Japan.
Data on radiation levels collected by Japanese volunteers near the Daiichi
nuclear power plant is 8 to 10 times higher than the official number… Questions
over the Fukushima
aftermath have never ceased to pop up… Japan is concerned with its
national image, food security, tourism, nuclear policy, medical compensation
and possibility of public lawsuits… [none] of them should be the country’s
excuse for preventing the post-disaster situation from being known to the
public…
[link to news.xinhuanet.com]

Friday, 14 July 2017

It was a rescue mission, but one that years later turned the tables on victim and rescuer. Abandoned by their own government, American servicemembers who came to the aid of Japanese disaster victims will now benefit from a fund set up for them by a former prime minister.

Following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011 in Japan, it quickly became clear the rescue work needed far outstripped the capabilities of Japan’s Self Defense Forces. The tsunami, whose waves reached heights of 130 feet, crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant, shutting down its cooling system and causing a nuclear meltdown that devastated the immediate area and at one point threatened to send a radioactive cloud over much of the nation.

Operation Tomadachi

The United States quickly dispatched an entire aircraft carrier group, centered on the USS Ronald Reagan, some 25 ships, for what came to be known as Operation Tomadachi (Friend). The U.S. provided search and rescue, and medical aid. Thousands of American military personnel assisted Japanese people in desperate need.

But it did not take long before the problems started.

The Aftermath

Military personnel soon began showing signs of radiation poisoning, including symptoms rare in young men and women: rectal bleeding, thyroid problems, tumors, and gynecological bleeding. Within three years of the disaster, young sailors began coming down with leukemia, and testicular and brain cancers. Hundreds of US military personnel who responded to Fukushima reported health problems related to radiation.

Some of those affected had worked in the area of the nuclear disaster, some had flown over it, many had been aboard ships that drew water out of the contaminated ocean to desalinate for drinking. All personnel were denied any special compensation by the US government, who referred back to Japanese authorities’ reports of relatively low levels of radiation, and to the military’s own protective efforts.

In a final report to Congress, the Department of Defense claimed personnel were exposed to less radiation than a person would receive during an airplane flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. The Defense Department stated due to the low levels of radiation “there is no need for a long-term medical surveillance program.”

However, five years after the disaster and more than a year after its final report, a Navy spokesperson admitted that 16 US ships from the relief effort remain contaminated. However, the Navy continued, “the low levels of radioactivity that remain are in normally inaccessible areas that are controlled in accordance with stringent procedures.”

Other Parts of the US Government Reacted Very Differently to the Threat

On March 16, five days after the meltdown, the State Department authorized the voluntary departure from Japan of eligible family members of government personnel assigned to the US Embassy in Tokyo and other State Department facilities.

Ten days later, the US military moved over 7,000 military family members out of Japan under what was also called a “voluntary departure.” The effort, codenamed Operation Pacific Passage, also relocated close to 400 military pets.

And around the same time, the American Embassy repeated a Japanese government warning to parents about radioactive iodine being detected in the Tokyo drinking water supply. Tokyo is about 150 miles away from the Fukushima disaster site.

US Servicemembers Sue the Nuclear Plant Owner

After receiving no help from their own government, in 2013 a group of US servicemembers (now numbering 400; seven others have died while the lawsuit winds its way through the courts) filed a lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO, the owner of the nuclear plant) seeking more than two billion dollars.

Local residents and environmental groups have condemned a
plan to release radioactive tritium from the crippled Fukushima
nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the
plant, say tritium poses little risk to human health and is quickly diluted by
the ocean.

In an interview with local media, Takashi Kawamura, chairman
of TEPCO, said: "The decision has already been made." He added,
however, that the utility is waiting for approval from the Japanese government
before going ahead with the plan and is seeking the understanding of local
residents.

Friday, 23 June 2017

Dr Helen Caldicott is an Australian physician and a leading anti-nuclear
activist. She is a widely respected lecturer and authority on the topic, and
played an integral role in the formation of the organisations Physicians for
Social Responsibility and International Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War.

The latter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She has won numerous
prizes for her efforts, such as the Humanist of the Year award from the
American Humanist Association.

Due to my personal concerns regarding the ignorance of the world’s media and
politicians about radiation biology after the dreadful accident at Fukushima in
Japan, I organized a 2 day symposium at the NY Academy of Medicine on March 11
and 12, 2013, titled ‘The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima,’
which was addressed by some of the world’s leading scientists, epidemiologists,
physicists and physicians who presented their latest data and findings on
Fukushima. [1]

Background

The Great Eastern earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, and the
ensuing massive tsunami on the east coast of Japan induced the meltdown of three
nuclear reactors within several days. During the quake the external power
supply was lost to the reactor complex and the pumps, which circulate up to one
million gallons of water per minute to cool each reactor core, ceased to function.
Emergency diesel generators situated below the plants kicked in but these were
soon swamped by the tsunami. Without cooling, the radioactive cores in units 1,
2 and 3 began to melt within hours.

Over the next few days, all three cores (each weighing more than 100 tonnes)
melted their way through six inches of steel at the bottom of their reactor
vessels and oozed their way onto the concrete floor of the containment
buildings. At the same time the zirconium cladding covering thousands of
uranium fuel rods reacted with water, creating hydrogen, which initiated
hydrogen explosions in units 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Massive quantities of radiation escaped into the air and water – three times
more noble gases (argon, xenon and krypton) than were released at Chernobyl,
together with huge amounts of other volatile and non-volatile radioactive
elements, including cesium, tritium, iodine, strontium, silver, plutonium,
americium and rubinium. Eventually sea water was – and is still – utilized to
cool the molten reactors.

Fukushima
is now described as the greatest industrial accident in history.

The Japanese government was so concerned that they were considering plans to
evacuate 35 million people from Tokyo,
as other reactors including Fukushima Daiini on the east coast were also at
risk.

Thousands of people fleeing from the smoldering reactors were not notified
where the radioactive plumes were travelling, despite the fact that there was a
system in place to track the plumes. As a result, people fled directly into regions
with the highest radiation concentrations, where they were exposed to high
levels of whole-body external gamma radiation being emitted by the radioactive
elements, inhaling radioactive air and swallowing radioactive elements.

[2] Unfortunately, inert potassium iodide was not supplied, which would have
blocked the uptake of radioactive iodine by their thyroid glands, except in the
town of Miharu.
Prophylactic iodine was eventually distributed to the staff of FukushimaMedicalUniversity
in the days after the accident, after extremely high levels of radioactive
iodine – 1.9 million becquerels/kg were found in leafy vegetables near the
University.

[3] Iodine contamination was widespread in leafy vegetables and milk, whilst
other isotopic contamination from substances such as caesium is widespread in
vegetables, fruit, meat, milk, rice and tea in many areas of Japan. [4]

The Fukushima
meltdown disaster is not over and will never end. The radioactive fallout which
remains toxic for hundreds to thousands of years covers large swathes of Japan and will
never be “cleaned up.” It will contaminate food, humans and animals virtually
forever.

I predict that the three reactors which experienced total meltdowns will
never be dissembled or decommissioned.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) – says it will take at least 30 to 40
years and the International Atomic Energy Agency predicts at least 40 years
before they can make any progress because of the extremely high levels of
radiation at these damaged reactors.

This accident is enormous in its medical implications. It will induce an
epidemic of cancer as people inhale the radioactive elements, eat radioactive
food and drink radioactive beverages. In 1986, a single meltdown and explosion
at Chernobyl
covered 40% of the European land mass with radioactive elements.

Already, according to a 2009 report published by the New York Academy of
Sciences, over one million people have already perished as a direct result of
this catastrophe. This is just the tip of the iceberg, because large parts of Europe and the food grown there will remain radioactive
for hundreds of years. [5]

Medical Implications of Radiation
Fact number one

No dose of radiation is safe. Each dose received by the body is cumulative and
adds to the risk of developing malignancy or genetic disease.
Fact number two

Children are ten to twenty times more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of
radiation than adults. Females tend to be more sensitive compared to males,
whilst foetuses and immuno-compromised patients are also extremely sensitive.

Fact number three

High doses of radiation received from a nuclear meltdown or from a nuclear
weapon explosion can cause acute radiation sickness, with alopecia, severe
nausea, diarrhea and thrombocytopenia. Reports of such illnesses, particularly
in children, appeared within the first few months after the Fukushima accident.
Fact number four

Ionizing radiation from radioactive elements and radiation emitted from X-ray
machines and CT scanners can be carcinogenic. The latent period of
carcinogenesis for leukemia is 5-10 years and solid cancers 15-80 years. It has
been shown that all modes of cancer can be induced by radiation, as well as
over 6000 genetic diseases now described in the medical literature.

But, as we increase the level of background radiation in our environment from
medical procedures, X-ray scanning machines at airports, or radioactive
materials continually escaping from nuclear reactors and nuclear waste dumps,
we will inevitably increase the incidence of cancer as well as the incidence of
genetic disease in future generations....

Monday, 29 May 2017

With specific information on Tritium, Strontium 90, Cesium 137, radioactive Iodine 131, and Plutonium. By Helen Caldicott, Volume 4, Issue 2 2014, Australian Medical Student Journal …Fukushima is now described as the greatest industrial accident in history. The Japanese government was so concerned that they were considering plans to evacuate 35 million people from Tokyo, as other reactors including Fukushima Daiini on the east coast were also at risk. [ 2,206 more words ]